When General Mills launched Cheerios in 1941, it was called Cheerioats and was the first ready-to-eat oat cereal. The name was changed to Cheerios in 1945. Over the next few decades, several different flavors of Cheerios hit the market, but it wasn't until 1999 that General Mills began advertising Cheerios as the only cold cereal clinically proven to help lower cholesterol.
Ingredients
The primary ingredient in Cheerios is whole grain oats. The rest of the ingredients are corn starch, sugar, salt, tripotassium phosphate, oat fiber, wheat starch, vitamins and minerals.
Oats
The claim that Cheerios lower cholesterol is based on the fact that the cereal is made from whole grain oats, and oats have more soluble fiber than any other grain. The American Heart Association says soluble fiber has been associated with a decreased risk of cardiovascular disease has been shown to reduce the bad LDL cholesterol. It's also important that Cheerios are a whole grain product because that increases the natural nutritional value.
Basic Nutrition
The nutritional values in this article are based on a one-cup serving size. A serving of plain Cheerios without milk added has 103 calories, 7 percent of the recommended daily value (DV) of carbohydrates and 3 percent of total fat. The cereal provides 11 percent of the recommended daily value of dietary fiber. One serving has only 3 percent of total daily fat, which includes 1 percent of the recommended daily value of cholesterol.
Vitamins
Because ready-to-eat cereals are fortified, they're a great source of vitamins. Cheerios are an especially high source of folate (68 percent DV). The cereal also provides 36 percent of thiamine and between 25 to 29 percent of vitamin B6, niacin, vitamin B12 and riboflavin. It only has a small amount of vitamins E and K, but supplies 9 percent of vitamin D and 16 percent of vitamin A.
Minerals
All of the essential minerals are found in Cheerios, but are an especially rich source of iron (49 percent DV), manganese (47 percent DV) and zinc (30 percent DV). You can also count on getting between 5 percent and 11 percent DV of magnesium, phosphorus, potassium and selenium. If you're watching your salt intake, be aware that one serving has 8 percent DV of sodium.
Comparison
The sweetened varieties---Frosted, Honey Nut, Apple Cinnamon---have about the same nutrition except that they have 9 to 13 grams of sugar per serving, compared with only 1 gram in regular Cheerios. Multi-Grain Cheerios provide a lot more of all the vitamins and some of the minerals. The Multi-Grain cereal has 103 percent of the daily value of all the B vitamins and zinc. Calcium goes up to 26 percent DV, and vitamin E increases to 70 percent. Iron jumps from 8.9 mg in regular Cheerios to 18.6 mg in Multi-Grain Cheerios, which represents about 100 percent of the DV for women, almost double the recommended daily intake of iron for men.
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